Arefeen Hridoy: The Top 5 Supercomputers More Power Hungry Than Ever

Thursday, August 30, 2012

The Top 5 Supercomputers More Power Hungry Than Ever


 
For the first time in a couple years, the United States is home to the most powerful supercomputer in the world, according to the biannual TOP500 list, released by the International Supercomputing Conference. 

A supercomputer located in China held the number-one spot in November of 2010, while a system in Japan won first place in both November and June of 2011. The last time a U.S.-based system placed first on the TOP500 was June of 2010.

The winning IBM Sequoia is housed at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where it is used by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). One of the computer's main functions is to "provide a more complete understanding of weapons performance," according to a Lawrence Livermore press release.

1. IBM Sequoia

IBM Sequoia is a petscale Blue Gene/Q supercomputer constructed by IBM for the National Nuclear Security Administration as part of the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program (ASC). It was delivered to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 2011 and was fully deployed in June 2012.
On 14 June 2012, the TOP500 Project Committee announced that Sequoia replaced the K computer as the world's fastest supercomputer, with a LINPACK performance of 16.32 petflops, 55% faster than the K computer's 10.51 petflops, using 123% more sockets than the K computer's 705,024 sockets. Sequoia is also more energy efficient, as it consumes 7.9 MW, 37% less than the K computer's 12.6 MW.
The entire supercomputer runs on Linux, with Compute Node Linux running on over 98,000 nodes, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on 768 I/O nodes that are connected to the file system.

Operators: LLNL

Location: Livermore, Alameda, SFBA, Northern California, United States

Power: 7.9 MW

Space: 3,000 square feet (280 m2)

Memory: 1.6 PB

Speed: 16.32 PFLOPS

Purpose: NW&UN, astronomy, energy, human genome, and climate change

Ranking: TOP 1: 2, June 2012



2. K computer

The K computer – named for the Japanese word "kei" (), meaning 10 quadrillion (1016) is a supercomputer produced by Fujitsu, currently installed at the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science campus in Kobe, Japan. The K computer is based on distributed memory architecture, with over 80,000 computer nodes. It is intended to have a variety of applications, including climate research, disaster prevention and medical research.
In June 2011, TOP500 ranked K the world's fastest supercomputer, with a rating of over 8 petaflops, and in November 2011, K became the first computer to top 10 petaflops. It is slated for completion in June 2012. In June 2012, K was superseded as the world's fastest supercomputer by the American IBM Sequoia.

Active: Operational June 2011 

Sponsors: MEXT, Japan

Operators: Fujitsu

Location: RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science 

Architecture:  88,128 SPARC64 VIIIfx processors, Tofu interconnect, Linux-based enhanced operating system 

Power: 12.6 MW

Speed: 10.51 petaflops (Rmax)

Ranking: TOP 2: 2, June 2012


3. Tianhe-I

Tianhe-I, Tianhe-1, or TH-1 (天河一号) (Mandarin pronunciation: pinyin: Tiān​hé yī​hào), in English, "Milky Way (literally, Sky River) Number One", is a supercomputer capable of an Rmax (maximum range) of 2.566 petaFLOPS. Located at the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin, China, it was the fastest computer in the world from October 2010 to June 2011 and is one of the few Petascale supercomputers in the world.
In October 2010, an upgraded version of the machine (Tianhe-1A) overtook ORNL's Jaguar to become the world's fastest supercomputer, with a peak computing rate of 2.507 petaFLOPS. In June 2011 the Tianhe-1A was overtaken by the K computer as the world's fastest supercomputer.
Both the original Tianhe-1 and Tianhe-1A use a Linux-based operating system.

Active: Tianhe-1 Operational 29 October 2009, Tianhe-1A Operational 28 October 2010

Sponsors: National University of Defense Technology

Operators: National Supercomputing Center 

Location: National Supercomputing Center, Tianjin, People's Republic of China

Speed: Tianhe-1: 563 teraFLOPS (Rmax),
          Tianhe-1A: 2.566 petaFLOPS (Rmax)

Ranking: TOP 3: 2nd, June 2011 (Tianhe-1A)

Purpose:  Petroleum exploration, aircraft simulation

4. Jaguar

Jaguar is a petascale supercomputer built by Cray at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The massively parallel Jaguar has a peak performance of just over 1,750 teraflops (1.75 petaflops). It has 224,256 x86-based AMD Opteron processor cores, and operates with a version of Linux called the Cray Linux Environment. Jaguar is a Cray XT5 system, a development from the Cray XT4 supercomputer.
In November 2009 and June 2010, TOP500, the semiannual list of the world's top 500 supercomputers, named Jaguar as the world's fastest computer. In late October 2010, the BBC reported that the Chinese supercomputer Tianhe-1A had taken over the top spot, achieving over 2.5 quadrillion calculations per second, thereby bumping Jaguar to second place. The November 2010 TOP500 list confirmed the new rankings.
In 2012 the Jaguar was transformed into Titan by replacing CPUs with GPUs.

Active: Operational 2005 

Operators: Cray 

Location: United States of America 

Architecture: 224,256 AMD Opteron processors 

Speed: 1.75 petaflops (peak) 

Cost: USD $104M.

Ranking: 4: 3, June 2011 



5. IBM Roadrunner

Roadrunner is a supercomputer built by IBM at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA. Currently the world's tenth fastest computer, the US$133-million Roadrunner is designed for a peak performance of 1.7 petaflops, achieving 1.026 on May 25, 2008 to become the world's first TOP500 Linpack sustained 1.0 petaflops system. It is a one-of-a-kind supercomputer, built from off the shelf parts, with many novel design features.
In November 2008, it reached a top performance of 1.456 petaflops, retaining its top spot in the TOP500 list. It is also the fourth-most energy-efficient supercomputer in the world on the Supermicro Green500 list, with an operational rate of 444.94 megaflops per watt of power used.
Active: Operational in 2008Final completion in 2009

Sponsors: IBM,  United States

Operators: National Nuclear Security Administration,  United States

Location: Los Alamos National Laboratory,  United States

 Architecture: 12,960 IBM PowerXCell 8i CPUs, 6,480 AMD Opteron dual-core processors, Infiniband, Linux
Power: 2.35 MW

Space: 296 racks, 560 m2 (6,000 sq ft)

Memory: 103.6 TiB

Speed: 1.042 petaflops

Cost: USD $125M

Ranking: TOP 5: 10, June 2011

Purpose: Modeling the decay of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Legacy: First TOP500 Linpack sustained 1.0 petaflops, May 25, 2008


                                                                                   

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